Logitech is dropping support for its oldest Harmony remotes

What about open sourcing stuff, instead of making it just "unsupported"?
- But that would take woooorrrrk 😤
  
  Not much work really, but few companies want their spaghetti code seen publicly.
- Often, these include code that they don't have the rights to publish.
  
  I feel like 99% of the time that's just a lazy or misleading excuse. I've worked in proprietary software development for 25 years and I've never worked for a company that didn't avoid restricted third-party code like the plague at all times. In the few, rare cases when we did have to use some proprietary third-party licensed library, it was usually kept very compartmentalized and easy to drop out of the code specifically because we were always afraid the other proprietary code vendor could fuck us and jack up their prices or find some nasty way to make our lives difficult.
  The excuse that there is some secret but legitimate third-party code they're not allowed to share simply doesn't hold water in the vast majority of cases.
  More likely answers are that some beancounter somewhere still imagines that the proprietary source code could possibly be valuable in some hypothetical future acquisition (nonsense of course) even though it has no real commercial value, or fears that it could expose the company to liability if some security flaw or licensing violation is found (more plausible).
  Ironically, perhaps the most likely reality for this resistance is that the software actually includes code that dictates they were actually always obligated to publish the source but never did. ie, GPL-based code. GPL violations are all too common in proprietary software and very few organizations have codebase governance effective enough to keep the situation under control with developers copy-pasting from anything they can find on Google. Releasing their plagiarized GPL source code would reveal to the world that they were not in compliance all along. Let it quietly die, and nobody ever finds out and they get away with it. It's not simply that they're embarrassed by bad code, it's that their bad code will potentially incriminate them. Not worth the risk, and sometimes it's not just a risk it's a certainty.
  The proprietary software industry relies on open source so much and rarely gives much of anything back. I'm fortunate that the company I'm working for now actually takes licensing seriously and does contribute to open source projects to some degree, although I keep insisting they need to do better.
- They did that with their Squeezebox range of media players.
  
  Yeah, lms is still going strong!

10 years isn't the worst run, but it still proves the point that anything which needs an app or connected web service to function will inevitably become e-waste, and maybe sooner than you'd like.
Earlier today, I was looking at reviews of portable Bluetooth speakers. One had a bullet point "No equalizer app, with only basic EQ functions available on the speaker itself."
The review intended that to be a negative, but I was like "Hell yeah that's what I want!"
Functionality in pure hardware means it will keep on working as long as the hardware works. It means that I myself get to be the one who decides when I need an upgrade, not when the company forces my hand.
Every single tech purchasing decision I make these days, having freedom from apps, cloud, or any other ticking time bomb is top of my feature list.
- Gonna be a pity not having 32 bands of eq on that puppy though... Also when a new version of the speaker comes out you probably won't even find out about it for like a month since you won't be getting a push notification about it while you're driving.
  
  Oh no!
  Anyway...
- Unless the company removes that. Like what Google did with Stadia for their controller..?
  
  Eh sorta but not really? Google released firmware to let you convert it to a regular Bluetooth controller, and although it was for a limited time, it's still available on GitHub.

I love my Elite but I think it’s absolutely stupid that I have to connect to one of their servers in order to change activities and buttons. There is literally zero reason for that. You could easily have an app that connects locally to the device and can do it there. I could see needing their service if you want to download new remote profiles but that should be it.
- But then how are they supposed to collect data?
- Their app is predominantly a web front end. You could previously program your remote entirely via their website years back iirc. They had to program this component as you say for getting new remote profiles.
  To be fair, why would they bother programming a 'local only offline mode' for your specific use-case when Internet connectivity was ubiquitous long before these devices were released?
  Like yeah in retrospect it would be helpful now, but as a business decision it would have made very little sense to Logitech.

I desperately wish they would make a new harmony remote or someone else would make a full featured universal remote. I know I am in the minority there I am sure.
- Switchbot is making that

My father is the most technologically illiterate man on the planet but he’s a TV fiend. The combination of turning the TV and cable box on and making sure it’s on the right input is too much for him. If it doesn’t ‘just work’ there is hell to pay.
I programmed a harmony remote for him years and years ago. When they discontinued them I went and bought three of the identical model. We have two left. Guess I’ll be opening them up and pushing the programming to all of them the next time I’m back.

I really want to build an ESP32 remote and hub combo with a community-owned device database. I have the know-how, but alas, not the time.
- Haha, exactly my first thought on reading this. Release some 3D printed cases too.

I just checked and my three aren't on the list, thankfully (two 665s and a 650). Best remotes I've ever had, hands down.
Has anyone come out with an equivalent spiritual successor product yet? I'm gonna lose my shpadoinkle if one of mine dies and I have to go back to remote hell or some janky universal remote and codebook.
- There are a few, the sofabaton is probably the closest to the cheaper harmony remotes, but it's configured via an app that requires login so not sure how long that will last.
  There are other companies that are targeting the high end remotes too ($300+) but they all appear to be based on android and get very poor battery life.
  
  Sofabaton is also buggy as fuck. Can't for the life of me figure out how to stop the double inputs on roku. Like I'll hit right arrow and it'll often, but not always send multiple and it'll scroll over 2 or 3 times.
  
  Hmmm, I'll have to check them out, thanks.

I'm bummed about this, but it's not a shock given they retired the brand back in 2021. So much for "we will support these devices for as long as they continue to be used" however. This will generate a lot of e-waste.
I have an 880 that my family use regularly with the TV/AV/etc. I don't mind so much navigating the three remotes and several buttons to get movies or TV running, but it'll be annoying having all the extra remotes out on coffee tables all the time now, and repeated instructions to the rest of the fam on how to use them 🥲

Logitech has gone from one of the best tech brands to essentially garbage. The hardware might still be ok, but their software is crap, and those comments about selling a mouse subscription...
- Sad but true. And they are taking some good stuff with them.
  Squeeze box back in the day was the biggest competitor to Sonos. All open source. Logitech bought them, then just shut it down for no apparent reason. Same thing happened with Harmony. Best user programmable remote on the market, Logitech buys them, then shuts them down for no apparent reason.
  I wish someone would scrape together a few million bucks or whatever Logitech would want to sell both brands, buy them, and resurrect them.
  
  Mama's got a squeeze box.
  Daddy never sleeps at night.
- At work, quite a few people use Logitech mice, but the IT security team had to block Logitech Options because Logitech added some sort of AI functionality to it without adding a killswitch for enterprise customers... On the positive side, people learnt about alternative apps to reconfigure the mice that don't have any of Logitech's bloat.
  iTerm added AI stuff but at least they added a killswitch (a setting in a plist file I think) to force it to be disabled.
- Their mice are great, until they need a subscription, for some reason...
- Even their hardware design these days is them copying popular products from smaller tech companies
  
  from smaller tech companies
  Like what?

Boo! Hiss!

Those devices are from 2008/2009
I'd be surprised to get 10 years of support on any technology product, let alone 17 years 🤷
- There is absolutely no reason why programming software for a universal remote should require a connection to a remote server to function. Program the codes you need, make some macros, and you're done. No server needed. Codes can be easily obtained from other resources that don't require 24/7 network access.
  
  Uh.. these remotes connect to Logitech servers so they can get infrared codes and button configurations for new devices from Logitech's (constantly updated) device database - and also so that people who have taken the time to manually 'learn' and label a new device's remote functionality can upload it to the central service for others to use. I can't add a TV released last year to my 10 year old Harmony remote without such a service.
  So yes, there's absolutely a reason for them to need to connect to a server. They also do not need '24/7 network access', instead they connect once in a blue moon if and when you wish to modify your remote's config.. via USB.
  
  Yeah this is the part I don't understand. Does the remote not have onboard storage?